Beckman Coulter Inc., a Fullerton-based maker of medical testing equipment and supplies, is outsourcing some metal work for some of its products.
The decision impacts 94 workers at its Fullerton metal shop, according to Beckman Coulter. Most of the workers are being laid off, the company said.
The metal shop, which has operated for decades, “has always delivered quality and excellence as part of the instrument supply chain,” the company said in a memo to workers. “To improve our competitive position, however, it has become clear that we must outsource this function, sharpening our focus on core business competencies.”
The move should be done by Aug. 1, according to the memo.
Savings depend on Beckman’s ability to reuse the metal shop space and on the volume of business the company transfers to a metal shop contractor. The company stands to save money from not having to invest in equipment for the metal shop, it said.
“With any company our size, you would look at outsourcing as an option for certain areas,” said Don Fuller, Beckman’s senior vice president of supply chain management, in an interview last year.
Beckman doesn’t “foresee a situation where there would be any massive outsourcing in the short- to medium-term,” Fuller said.
The metal shop closure is a small example of changes under Chief Executive Scott Garrett, who took over in early 2005 for longtime leader John Wareham.
Early on, Garrett combined the company’s dominant diagnostic business with its smaller biomedical unit, cutting about 350 jobs. He also changed the way Beckman accounts for leases of its instruments.
He’s also combining a pair of circuit board plants in Hialeah, Fla., and Porterville near Bakersfield. Beckman is closing the Florida plant and has laid off 103 out of 111 people there.
An unspecified number of jobs have gone to Porterville, a spokeswoman said. Porterville had about 130 workers at the middle of 2006.
The company also outsourced the making of “raw boards”,a building block for circuit boards.
On the distribution side, Beckman has combined six small West Coast warehouses into a 180,000-square-foot distribution center in Chino. That facility ships chemistry instruments for labs as well as chemicals used for testing blood.
Convenience and efficiency drove the move, said David Mastromatteo, Beckman’s vice president of logistics and distribution, in an interview last year.
“The customer in Seattle will receive hematology and chemistry reagents from one shipping point instead of multiple distribution points,” Mastromatteo said.
Beckman is almost ready to move into a distribution center in Hebron, Ky., which will serve the eastern part of the country.
In other Beckman news, the company is looking for a director to replace Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, who resigned from the board last month, citing scheduling conflicts.
Lavizzo-Mourey, a 52-year-old physician and chief executive of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, joined Beckman’s board in 2001.
The company has started a search.
